My role meant regularly interacting with about 20 or more people who worked in news and I wasn’t aware of this thread.
In my new job working for Max Richter and advocating for various different causes (particularly trying to help musicians get post brexit visas), I am regularly dealing with BBC News too. Plus I have friends who still do work directly for BBC News.
I’d prefer something less blunt but I also think it’s quite clear that I don’t fill this thread with critique of my former colleagues.
I made that thread. “Guardian” was just something that was said about the more light hearted nonsense they put out and that’s what I made the thread to share originally, but it became more serious (or talking about Adrian Chiles). Wouldn’t care if it became “fuck the Guardian”.
I think the title was started as an expression of frustration with what is meant to be a better quality news service. When it fails, it’s qualitatively different to the Mail, because no one has expectations for the Mail to be fair or accurate.
NB I have no issues with the thread title changing, but I understand why it was called what it was
Absolutely, and it’s the sanctimonious way they preach about a lot of issues (like climate change) while at the same time advocating flying all over the globe on fancy holidays (admittedly, at present due to Covid it has a UK focus, but it should probably keep that post-pandemic). It’s a have cake and eat it approach to morality.
If you’ve ever worked at a big sprawling company you’ll be aware how hard any groupthink is and that there is no “they”
Of course the BBC is going to be hypocritical because it’s so big and does so many things and is mostly full of small silos.
My positive coverage of Lizzo when I worked on Glastonbury was questionable and I had to justify it (and luckily had the ridiculous stats to back it up as several posts went viral and were shared by Lizzo herself). I’m sure it’s similar in news when someone has done a thing, especially on a live broadcast.
Yep, it was in relation to the Guardian (not the BBC). I’m still grateful for the BBC (one of my old uni mates is a producer on Today) and for all its faults, I still think we’re lucky to have it. Glad that the process to select the chair of Ofcom is being restarted as I’m sure things would have deteriorated further with him.
I have worked in large and very large organisations and left to set up on my own, precisely because of large company mentality
I don’t think the main thrust of people on here’s issue with the beeb or guardian is to do with them being holier than thou as such. Its more to do with what @FKA_Adam_Jeffson says.
I thought I’d read it as they’d restarted the process because he didn’t get the job, with the hope he does get it on a second attempt. That was probably in the Guardian.
Yup. I don’t know how long Sean worked there, but the origins of the thread possibly/probably go back to a time before Sean started there. The relevant info is in the OP, but seeing as old DiS has been stripped bare we’re relying on the wayback machine to be sure.
The thread title was changed, in response to an upthread discussion (see here), to make explicit that this isn’t about the BBC as a whole (where much of the BBCs entertainment output is accused of being too left wing), it’s…
and
The expletive being there because, as noted, in comparison,
and this was intended from the start to catalogue stuff rather more akin to the Fuck The Police thread than the low-level eyerolling at the Guardian that was going on in that thread in its early days.
DiS convention to date has been that the threads aren’t renamed without checking in with the thread starter first, yeah?
I don’t think the current title is particularly off, for the reasons just explained. But I’m not particularly wedded to it in its exact current format, either. And I acknowledge that there’s room and reason for differentiation between the Police thread and this one. If only because
So I’ve changed it again. With the notion that it’s in the spirit of the Mass Observation project where ordinary people logged things seen from their perspective, which would later, collectively, prove to be a valuable record.
Very helpful summary of the thread which avoids the need for TL;DR. Clear what this is aimed at, and why, and the change of thread title (while less rage-y) makes it a little easier to engage with!
I like the sentiment, if not the articulation of this New European article:
So are we saying that intimidation and abuse by an angry mob is somehow indirectly his fault, because that’s what his employer encouraged all this time, or something (many citations needed)? There are loads of other threads here which call out such disgusting behaviour for exactly what it is, and rightly so. I don’t know much about him but he was just man and I don’t want to live in a society where that kind of treatment of journalists is seen as okay. Notable that the lack of police response to such mob rule behaviour didn’t make it to the Fuck The Police thread. The mental gymnastics to hold these various lines simultaneously must be hard work.
No I think people are saying that the general outcry from the media class is somewhat hard to bear when the media have basically created a fake country that allows the right wing to flourish
I didn’t really see the media outcry, I don’t really like reading that self-serving shit either, I was only reacting to seeing the video and the replies to Sean’s message.
